Becoming A State
by Xipholynx
Summary: The States were like spirits to America. Intangible, invisible and easy to ignore. But with her very Statehood hanging in the balance Arizona will not take being invisible like the other states and will fight to be recognized.


Becoming A State

Xipholynx

Summery: The States were like spirits to America. Intangible, invisible and easy to ignore. But with her very Statehood hanging in the balance Arizona will not take being invisible like the other states and will fight to be recognized.

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How Arizona Almost Didn't Become a State

Even for America Arizona was always a bit extreme, she was a rude, crude land in the Southwestern desert and her 'citizens' were mostly made up of scoundrels and ne're-do-wells. She was scary and liked controversy and America liked to keep her at a distance. It hurt her that America didn't want her to be an 'official' part of him. She didn't realized until the 20th century that America wasn't deliberately fighting her, he just wasn't aware that his States had personifications. This caused her to change from the tactics she had used in the past - petitions from her citizens.

Arizona began her life as a conjoined twin to New Mexico. New Mexico was more vibrant and colorful and it wasn't until the Civil War that Arizona was separated from her sister and by the Confederate States of America of all personifications. It hurt a bit that it was her father's 'evil twin' who first recognized her as separate from New Mexico but that wouldn't stop her from working hard to get America's recognition.

Beginning in 1856 America's European immigrants who had settled in the forgotten land had twice petitioned Washington D.C. for a separate Arizona Territory, and twice they were told no. The only thing going for Arizona was the Butterfield Overland Stagecoach, which carried mail, freight and passengers to California. It was a route Southern congressmen had forced through with an obvious eye to the future: This is how the South would get gold from California. But when the Confederacy was formed and the congressmen left Washington, America revoked the Butterfield contract in March 1861. This caused the first severing of New Mexico for Arizona but it separated her communities from the rest of the country.

Being cast out from the main of America hurt Arizona deeply and so she turned to her 'evil' uncle for help and on March 16, 1861 - a month before the Civil War broke out - Confederate adopted Arizona as a state. On March 28 Arizona took a further step due to her acceptance and again declared herself a slave state.

America could have possibly stopped this adoption if he had been more considerate. Instead, he did the opposite. America removed Union troops from Arizona to go to Texas, leaving Arizona and her population unprotected from bandits from Mexico and the Apache Chief Cochise, who already was at war with the white intruders. Cochise saw the retreat of the "Blue Coats" as a victory and launched a rampage that terrorized the area.

Help for Arizona came from rebel Lt. Col. John R. Baylor, who captured Fort Fillmore to give the settlers some protection. Arizona and her citizens welcomed Baylor with open arms due to his assistance, holding another convention on Aug. 28, 1861, to support his actions and elect his friend Granville Henderson Oury as its delegate to the Confederate States Congress. By Oct. 1, Oury was in Richmond, Va., seeking formal status for Arizona as the South's only rebel territory.

In early 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis created the Confederate Territory of Arizona, finally giving her self and her land a form. This finally got America's attention, and luckily President Abraham Lincoln swept in, renaming her the Territory of Arizona on Feb. 24, 1863. He established the boundary line that divided her from New Mexico to this day.

If Arizona thought that was the first step in becoming a real part of the United States of America, she was sadly mistaken. There is an eerie and cruel irony in her history. Davis officially brought Arizona into his nation, giving her a birthday of Feb. 14, 1862, exactly 50 years to the day that Arizona became the last of the 48 contiguous states.

The road to statehood was long and agonizing. No other territory waited as long or fought as stubbornly as Arizona Territory (her official name) did to become a state. Her determination was unquenchable just 28 years after becoming a territory, her residents decided the time was ripe to help her become a state. In 1891, they wrote a constitution and took the train to Washington to hand-deliver it to Congress. It was barely glanced over by America before he rejected the claim outright with a flourish. Considering the rejection they received, one can only imagine the derisive jokes passed around congressional offices as the Arizonans went home with their tails between their legs. If Arizona cried no one was around to see her.

Seven years later, Arizona and her citizens got even more dramatic, demonstrating with blood and guts and their lives just how serious they were about statehood. In what is perhaps the most heroic action to gain statehood in the history of the nation, thousands of Arizona men answered the call for a volunteer army in 1898 to fight in the America's first overseas war: the Spanish-American War. Not only did Arizona have thousands more volunteers than could be taken, they were the very first to volunteer and became Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.

When in 1903 the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories proposed it be combined with New Mexico and be admitted as one state Arizona decided that she had finally had enough. She was going to make America recognize the fact that she was herself and that he couldn't just reject her.

Arizona didn't know it but she officially was the state that caused America to have such an extreme fear of ghosts due to her actions towards him during the days that followed. She want to his house and she at first didn't realize that America literally could not see her. She was yelling at him and perceived him to ignore her so she picked up the nearest object to her, a chair and threw it at him.

In America's perspective his house had become haunted. Every time he tried to go somewhere an invisible (violent) force would throw objects at him. If he was eating the force would smash through his plate, spattering him with food. He was constantly feeling phantom stings from what felt like slaps, keeping him awake at all hours of the night and finally one day when he was so exhausted he didn't even bother with finding his glasses he saw her for the first time.

His first thought when he saw the shadowy dark haired little girl with electric blue eyes and tanned skin was that she looked very, very angry. She was yelling and as he strained his ears to listen he heard a whisper of sound, almost inaudible.

"Why do you hate me so much? I love you but you don't want me! You're a horrible dad and I want to hate you but I can't. I hate you but I love you! Just let me be a state! Don't tie me back up with New Mexico! I'll die if I have to be one with her again dad!"

Stop the presses. Since when was he a father? Quirking his eyebrows with surprise he blurted, "Who are you, little girl?"

"I'm Arizona, you jerk! Make me a state!"

There was a pause and finally America buried his surprise that his state had a personification and said, "Get a better state constitution and we'll see. Let me sleep."

She beamed at him and said, "It'll be the best ever!"

Arizona started calling herself the "47th state" in anticipation of things turning around for her but it would be nine years before she would become a state. Congress overcame its fears of the spitfire territory and told her to deliver her constitution to them. Arizona's Constitutional Convention opened on Oct. 10, 1910, and ran for 60 days, producing what was then considered either "one of the most progressive" constitutions of any state, or "socialistic and undemocratic." It did not include voting rights for women but did include the initiative, referendum and recall, including the recall of judges if they didn't like them. President William Howard Taft warned Arizona that he would never approve it if the recall was left in it. While some in Arizona, including its newspapers, claimed the entire effort was "all for naught" because of the recall, voters loved the constitution and passed it on Feb. 9, 1911.

Taft upheld his promise and vetoed the constitution, telling the Arizona Territory it would never be admitted with that provision. Arizona responded like an obedient child, and removed the recall of judges before going back to voters who approved the sanitized constitution. Arizona was finally approved for statehood but she would face one more disappointment. She had hoped to be admitted on Feb. 12, the birthday of President Lincoln, who remained a hero to the state for making her territory in the first place. But Taft was busy and didn't sign until Valentine's Day on Feb. 14, 1912. Meanwhile, New Mexico, which didn't tinker with Taft's rules on a constitution, was admitted as the 47th state on Jan. 6, 1912, making Arizona the 48th.

Arizona's celebration was epic. When President Taft signed the official papers in Washington, D.C., at 10:23 a.m. on that Wednesday, a telegraph key brought home the message. All across Arizona her citizens were celebrating. In Bisbee they set off a stack of 48 sticks of dynamite, while in Globe, that magic number came from a cannon. In Tucson, sirens at the waterworks announced the news. In Prescott, they raised a toast and shot off pistols on Whiskey Row while Arizona-born boys and girls helped plant a native white oak in the town plaza. In Phoenix, George W.P. Hunt walked from his downtown hotel to the state Capitol and was sworn in as Arizona's first governor. Acclaimed orator William Jennings Bryan spoke for two hours at the Capital ceremonies. A huge parade included virtually every patriotic and fraternal organization in the state. A cannonade of 48 howitzer salutes on City Hall Plaza was so loud, it unsettled horses and broke windows and was halted at 38.

Arizona was the last state in the Continental U.S. but she was the first one that America could see, hear and feel. The "little girl" responded to statehood by giving America a bone crushing hug before braking down in joyful tears, crying "thank you, thank you" into his shirt. America felt warm and fuzzy, this could work. Now maybe Arizona would be a little less rowdy. Seeing her crafty smile after her hug America felt that perhaps he had something a little more rowdy.

At her first election after statehood in the fall of 1912, Arizona reinstated the recall of judges into the state Constitution, pissing off President Taft and, by a healthy margin, they gave Arizona women the right to vote, eight years before national suffrage. It was the first time, but certainly not the last, that the America would realize that he had adopted one ornery state to his family.

End

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Hope you enjoyed it.


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